Latest News

MEXICO CITY — Authorities confiscated more than $200 million in U.S. currency from methamphetamine producers in one of this city's ritziest neighborhoods, they said Friday, calling it the largest drug cash seizure in history.

The seizure reflected the vast scope of an illegal drug trade linking Asia, Mexico and the United States, officials said. Two of the seven people arrested Thursday at a faux Mediterranean villa in the Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood were Chinese nationals.

The group was part of a larger drug-trafficking organization that imports "precursor chemicals" from companies in India and China for processing into methamphetamine in Mexican "super labs," authorities said. The methamphetamine is eventually sold in the United States.

The raid resulted from an investigation that began in December, when authorities seized 19 tons of pseudoephedrine, a cold medicine that is a key ingredient in the production of methamphetamine, at a Mexican port on the Pacific Coast.

A legally registered Mexican company, listed by a trade association as the country's third-largest importer of pseudoephedrine, was implicated, officials said.

Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have become increasingly important in the U.S. methamphetamine trade, because the U.S. has imposed tougher controls on the sale of the chemicals used to produce the highly addictive drug.

President Felipe Calderon hailed the seizure as a major development in his government's war on drug traffickers, who have ravaged several Mexican cities and towns.

"We are working in a decisive manner to save our country and to keep Mexico safe and clean," Calderon told an audience in Tijuana. "I don't even want to imagine how many young people this gang poisoned with its drugs. But I can assure you, they will do it no longer."

Mexican officials said the cash seized was mostly in U.S. $100 bills and weighed at least 4,500 pounds.

"Kudos for the Mexicans," said Donald C. Semesky, financial operations chief for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "They're very serious in this effort, and we commend them."

U.S. officials said that, if confirmed, the cash seizure would be several times larger than any other made from drug traffickers. A spokesman for the Mexican attorney general's office said that experts were still analyzing the $205.6 million in cash to check for counterfeits but that the bills appeared to be legitimate.

Officials with the attorney general's organized crime unit used a moving truck, guarded by a 25 patrol-car caravan, to take the money to its headquarters.

Authorities said the traffickers were led by a naturalized Mexican citizen of Chinese descent who appeared to have left the country.

Several machines for manufacturing pills were found at the site, but the group did not produce drugs there. The mansion appeared to serve as a financial operations center and cash storage facility.

Exclusive neighborhood

The neighborhood is home to some of the capital's wealthiest residents and many members of the diplomatic corps. The back of the property is contiguous with a racquetball court at the Ukrainian ambassador's residence. The Israeli Embassy is a few blocks away.

Most neighbors and the many maids and security guards who work in the area declined to comment on the raid. The few who did said they had no knowledge of illicit activity.

"The problem is that all of these houses are veritable fortresses," said one of the neighborhood's security guards, who asked not to be named. "You never know what goes on inside. The doors open automatically. The owners all have chauffeurs. People go in and out, and you never see anything."

A driver-bodyguard arrested at the house had told neighbors he was a retired lieutenant colonel in the Mexican army. Neighbors said he walked a German shepherd along the tree-lined streets.

Authorities said the chain of events that brought police to the mansion began in December, when they discovered a shipping container filled with barrels of pseudoephedrine on a storage lot at customs offices in Lazaro Cardenas, a port city about 175 miles northwest of Acapulco.

Why wedding ring should put on the fourth finger??Pls follow the below step, really god made this a miracle (this is from a Chinese excerpt)

Firstly, show your palm, center finger bend and put together back to back Secondly, the rest 4 fingers tips to tips

Game begins....follow the below arrangement,

5 finger but only 1 pair can split.Try to open your thumb, the thumb represents parents, it can be open because all human does go thru sick and dead. Which are our parents will leave us one day.

Please close up your thumb, then open your second finger, the finger represent brothers and sisters, they do have their own family which is too they will leave us too.

Now close up your second finger, open up your little finger, this represent your children. Sooner or later they too will leave us for they got they own living to live.

Nevertheless, close up your little finger, try to open your fourth finger which we put our wedding ring; you will be surprise to find that it cannot be open at all. Because it represent husband and wife, this whole life you will be attach to each other.

A Chinese man has let his fingernails on one hand grow for 15 years.Li Jianping, 43, of Shishi City, Fujian province, says the nails on his left hand are one metre long in total.

He told the Straits City News he was very proud of them but admitted they could be an inconvenience at times.

“I never go to crowded places. And during sleep, I have to keep my left wrist under my head to prevent the hand from moving,” says Li, who owns a grocery store.

The current length took 15 years to achieve, but he first started to grow them 23 years ago.

“When I was 20, I read a news report saying an Indian man had let the fingernails on his left hand grow to around one meter. Then I made up my mind to surpass him," he said.

“Before 1992, my nails were broken twice in accidents: once when I was moving things, the second time by a friend. Each time I had to start over.”

73-year-old Wang Xiaoya uses her teeth to tow two vehicles with a combined weight of more than 5 tons in Jinan, east China's Shandong Province on March 13, 2007. She started training since the age of 40. Even though she is already 73, her teeth are still extremely strong.